In Carolina Ixta's New Novel, Teens Fight Against Pollution for a 'Few Blue Skies'

"Fresh off the success of her Oakland-set debut novel, Shut Up, This is Serious, Bay Area author Carolina Ixta returns with a sophomore offering inspired in part by the inequities she saw in the region. For Ixta - a public education advocate and alumna of the Oakland Unified School District who now teaches fourth and fifth grade in San Leandro - fiction writing is a megaphone for social consciousness. Writing for a young adult audience, in particular, allows her to entertain young readers and teach them about their own realities."

""My father was a delivery man for a bread company in San Francisco, so as a kid, I was very aware of how work was a way to make money, but [also] how work really affected my family and their health," she says, noting that he sustained a number of injuries on the job. Ixta was also inspired by her grandfather's time in the Bracero Program, a joint agreement between Mexico and the U.S. that offered millions of Mexican men short-term work in agriculture during a post-WWII labor shortage."

"But they are having those quintessential American and Latinx experiences under Selva's dark shadow, which literally blots out their once-blue skies. Ixta's novel wraps these issues in a juicy love story and a sympathetic familial drama. Her prose is expressive throughout. A school fistfight turns one teen's mouth into "a grid of red clenched between his teeth" and Paloma's life"

Few Blue Skies centers on a Latinx family confronting environmental pollution, labor injuries, and generational immigration history across the Bay Area and Inland Empire. The narrative begins with an epigraph comparing local children to canaries in coal mines, setting the tone for concerns about warehouse development and blotted-out skies. Family memory includes a deliveryman father who sustained workplace injuries and a grandfather who participated in the Bracero Program. The story combines a young romance and a sympathetic familial drama, using vivid scenes and expressive language to illuminate social inequities for a young adult audience.

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